Friday, February 06, 2015

Obama Compares Christians to Islamic Terrorists

A day after he held an all-Muslim meeting at the White House, President Obama chided Christians during the National Prayer Breakfast not to criticize radical Islamist terrorists who behead journalists and burn prisoners of war to death because hundreds of years ago Catholics committed brutal acts in the name of Jesus Christ.

“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith.”-- President Barack Hussein Obama

In his comments at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama condemned violence in the name of religion and pointed to religious groups other than the Islamic State that have perpetrated acts of terror in human history.

"Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place," the president said, "remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

The president's comments angered some who felt that comparing the atrocities of the Islamic State to other acts of violence was out of line. The Catholic League's Bill Donohue called it "an attempt to deflect guilt from Muslim madmen," and argued that Christian crusaders were merely defending themselves against hostile Muslim neighbors.

President Obama may have thought he was giving a straightforward history lesson at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday when he compared the atrocities of the Islamic State to the bloodshed committed in the name of Christianity in centuries past.

But that is not how many of his longtime critics saw it.

“The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said Jim Gilmore, the former Republican governor of Virginia. “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States.”

Mr. Gilmore said the comments go “further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

President Obama has never been one to go easy on America. . . . At a time of global anxiety over Islamist terrorism, Obama noted pointedly that his fellow Christians, who make up a vast majority of Americans, should perhaps not be the ones who cast the first stone.

Obama spoke a day after meeting with Muslim leaders, in what participants said was his first roundtable with a Muslim-only group since taking office. The Muslim leaders who argued that they feel their community has faced unfair scrutiny in the wake of terrorist attacks overseas. Although the White House released only a broad description of the meeting — which touched on issues including racial profiling — participants said it gave them a chance to express their concerns directly to the president.

Farhana Khera, executive director of the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, one of 13 participants, said the session gave Obama a chance to focus on Muslim Americans the way he has done with other constituencies, such as African American and Jewish groups.

Obama also suggested that free speech should be curbed or regulated to shield Islamic ideas and Muslims’ self-esteem from the rough-and-tumble world of modern democracies.

In Islamic culture and laws, criticism of Islamic ideas is often treated as traitorous insults to Islam’s deity and its final prophet that deserve capital punishment.

Obama’s qualified endorsement of Islamic blasphemy laws echoed his 2012 statement to the United Nations General Assembly, when he said “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

. . .

The Crusades began in 1095, roughly 906 years before the 9/11/2001 attack in New York, and roughly 450 years after Arabs occupied the Christian city of Jerusalem, which was then part of the Christian Byzantine Empire. The empire was eventually destroyed when Islamic armies used mercenary European gunners to capture and occupy Byzantium in 1453.

“Mr. President--Many people in history have used the name of Jesus Christ to accomplish evil things for their own desires,” said Rev. Graham. “But Jesus taught peace, love and forgiveness. He came to give His life for the sins of mankind, not to take life.”

“Mohammad on the contrary was a warrior and killed many innocent people,” said Rev. Graham. “True followers of Christ emulate Christ—true followers of Mohammed emulate Mohammed.”

. . . As for the Inquisition, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights reports that “the Catholic Church had almost nothing to do with it. The Church saw heretics as lost sheep who needed to be brought back into the fold. By contrast, secular authorities saw heresy as treason; anyone who questioned royal authority, or who challenged the idea that kingship was God-given, was guilty of a capital offense.”

One of the leading authorities on the Inquisition, Henry Kamen, states that a total of 1,394 people were killed during the Inquisition. “Today, Muslim madmen kill more than that in a few months,” said [Catholic League President Bill] Donohue.